Hospital Job Growth Up Slightly in February

Hospital payroll additions grew by 2,100 jobs in February, a relatively flat rate when compared with historic trends, but a significant increase from the 700 hospital payroll additions reported in January, Bureau of Labor Statistics preliminary data shows.

Overall, the healthcare sector – everything from hospitals to podiatrists' offices to kidney dialysis centers – created 34,300 payroll additions in February, more than double the number of payroll additions reported for the sector in January. Over the last 12 months, healthcare has created 260,000 jobs, an average of more than 22,000 new healthcare jobs each month, BLS data show.

Ambulatory services continued to be the main catalyst for job growth in healthcare, recording 16,900 payroll additions in February. Ambulatory services accounted for 160,200 of the 265,800 payroll additions in the healthcare sector in 2010, while hospitals created 50,100 for the year. Nursing and residential care facilities accounted for another 15,000 new jobs in February, BLS data show.

BLS data from January and February is preliminary and may be considerably revised in the coming months.

Overall, the healthcare sector employed 13.9 million people in February, including 4.7 million jobs at hospitals, 6 million jobs in ambulatory services, and 2.3 million in physicians' offices, BLS preliminary data show.

The larger U.S. economy gained 192,000 jobs in February and the nation's jobless rate fell slightly from 9% to 8.9% for the month as the number of unemployed people decreased by 600,000 to 13.7 million. The number of long-term unemployed -- people jobless for 27 weeks or longer – fell from 6.2 million in January to 6 million in February and accounted for 43.9% of the unemployed, BLS preliminary data shows.

Even with the relatively slower healthcare job growth in February, the sector has been one of the few areas of steady job growth during the recession and slow recovery, creating 828,900 jobs since the recession began in December 2007, BLS data show.